Six-year-old YouTuber buys £6.5m house with profits from controversial toy review channel

Boram has millions of subscribers but has provoked controversy in South Korea

A six-year-old YouTube star from South Korea has bought a house worth 9.5 billion won (£6.5 million) with the proceeds from her toy review and vlog channels.

The YouTuber known as Boram has more than 30 million subscribers across the two channels, with some of her videos attracting more then 350 million views.

She bought the house in the fashionable Gangnam district of Seoul – made famous around the world through the song Gangnam Style by Psy, which was once the most-viewed video on YouTube.

Toy review channels and other content aimed at younger audiences have proved hugely profitable in recent years, with the highest earning YouTuber in 2018 making $22 million through his Ryan ToysReview channel.

Income can come through adverts played in the videos or through sponsored products that are reviewed on the YouTube channel. YouTubers can also earn income through selling merchandise or through donations send by viewers.

It is not yet clear what Boram plans to do with the house, though local media has speculated that it might be used to host more content for the channel.

Despite her popularity in South Korea, Boram's channels have provoked controversy over several staged clips that appeared to show her stealing money, driving cars and giving birth in 2017.

This prompted the charity Save The Children to press charges against Boram's parents for putting the young YouTuber in situations that could be mentally distressing.

The clips have since been removed from Boram's channels and the parents apologised to the public for distributing footage that could have negatively influenced underage viewers.

Earlier this year, YouTube made the decision to turn off comments on videos featuring children, after fears were raised about the video-sharing platform being used by a community of potential child abusers.

"We disabled comments from tens of millions of videos that could be subject to prefatory behaviour," YouTube said in a statement at the time.

"These efforts are focused on videos featuring young minors and we will continue to identify videos at risk over the next few months."